Bonneville StoriesAuthor: Doyon, MarkGenre: Short Stories Publisher: POCOL Press Released: 2001 |
A Review by Laurie Edwards
10/06/2002
Seldom, however, do I get as lucky as I did with Bonneville Stories, a collection of oddball short tales by Mark Doyon. Set in the town of Bonneville—a hop, skip, and jump from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia—Doyon's stories are filled with unlucky, crazy, or just plain ill-fitting characters, characters for whom nothing goes as planned. From a dope-addicted glass sculptress to the dad who got mangled by a remote-control airplane to a kid whose hand is a hook after a fling with illegal fireworks to a guy who got struck seven times by lightning before finally blowing his head off, these people are like a something out of "The Twilight Zone"—strange people for whom life is somewhere in their minds, and what they live isn't what the rest of us see and feel. Misfortune dogs the residents of Bonneville, and sometimes the misfortune doesn't end until the resident himself puts an end to it.
Roy Sullivan, as unlucky a man as ever stood outside in a rainstorm, was struck by lightning a befuddling seven times during his years as a Shenandoah park ranger...He became aquatinted with lightning, seemingly against the odds, in 1942, when he lost a big toenail to it. A sense of deja vu gave rise to paranoia when he lost his eyebrows to a strike in 1969. A year later a bolt seared his left shoulder. In April 1972, his hair burst into flames. In June 1976, his ankle was scorched. He capped this sepfecta in June 1977, when already hollowed out on the inside, he suffered massive chest and stomach burns while mounting a gun rack to the back of his pickup truck in Massanutten.This isn't to say the characters in Bonneville Stories come off like a circus sideshow; they're all people you could know, though you'd probably rather not. The Mayor, for example, is every cunning and sleazy small-town politician you've ever been disgusted by, but Doyon explains this man's motivations and ideals in such a way as to make him seem like something new.
Six years later, his addled body pulsing, his mind weary, Uncle Roy did what the lightning had failed to do. He blew his hanging head off with a double-barreled, ten-gauge shotgun.
The Mayor happened to be a political man, and so his desperation, whatever its impetus, generally bore political fruit. He had a way with people. He understood they were the same under the skin. They might paint themselves outrageous colors, or disguise their voices, but underneath they all wanted the same things. They sought food, of quality or simply in quantity. They wanted to bask in the glint and glow of large piles of currency. They were, like the Mayor, drawn to power. And some of them, bored, perhaps, by the limitations of their other motives, prowled about in the shadows, Pee Wee Herman-like, collecting carnal knowledge.Each character is compelling in his/her own way, and you'll want to keep reading about these people and be bitter when the story's over. Nearly all these stories would be the basis for good full-length novels, but Doyon has kept them short and sweet. Enter characters, develop them, end it with a twist nobody'll see coming—Doyon has this formula down pat, doing it so well it doesn't even really seem like a formula at all. Furthermore, he's managed to neatly tie the first and last story together, showing us (in the person of the hook kid) the final result of the Mayor's sociopathic personality.
The sheer power in much of Bonneville Stories is enough to make you gasp and stare. It's not the power of wild violence or explicit sex; this is a more subtle strength, the strength of imagining the worst of everyday life. When a compulsive gambler misses the lotto by one number, for example,
She grabbed the box of slugs, eased open the pistol's well-oiled cylinder, and methodically inserted a single flat-nosed .44 caliber shell into one of the chambers. If Providence wanted to play games, she would play.Though I generally avoid the word "brilliant"—it's too often used to describe things that aren't—I can only call Bonneville Stories a brilliant collection of beautifully written stories that made me cringe, grimace, and laugh, while sometimes moving me to great pity. There just aren't any flaws here, and I can't possibly do this book justice in a review—no one could, really; you simply must read this one for yourself...and don't forget that Christmas is coming. Buy more copies to give as gifts; Mark Doyon must be encouraged to write more.
© Copyright CultureCartel.com 10/06/2002
